this love will soon come to an end.

It should be home, though no matter how you strain for the warm feelings of nostalgia, nothing but the chill of winter seeps into your skin. 

When you were little, your mother spoke of it like one, longing for osmanthus and oleander, orchid and peach blossoms, found on a fleet of ships flying through the stars. You bought her packets of oleander seeds with your allowance, told her you could plant a garden all your own here in the Northern Star Space Station you called home. 

She planted the seeds, more for your sake than hers, but it never slaked the naked yearning in her face, no matter how many Xianzhou plants you cultivated in her room. If anything, the yearning only grew with each new blossom.

You couldn’t understand, not then, not now. Flowers were flowers. What made the ones grown here any different from the ones found on those ships? Biologically speaking, they were the exact same species. Hell, you even sourced seeds from the Xianzhou Luofu itself.

But you couldn’t say anything. It was your fault, after all, that she lived in exile. All you could do was turn the dirt in their narrow pots, set the hydraulic systems, and adjust the artificial sunshine warming the plants. Trying, in vain, to grow a home for your mother.

Dan Heng nudges you with his elbow, breaking you out of your thoughts. “Are you ready?” he says quietly.

“I’ll never be,” you say. “But we’re already here, aren’t we?”

“Yes,” he acknowledges. “We are.”

“Two war criminals returning to the scene of the crime,” you say teasingly. “We’ll see just how much of a bad idea this ends up being. Maybe if we’re lucky we’ll get matching cells in the Shackling Prison.”

“I don’t want to be cellmates with you,” he says, and you whack him in the back of the knee with your foot. He barely moves outside of rolling his eyes.

“Do you feel anything?” you say.

“From your kick? No. I recommend taking more sparring lessons.”

“I meant here,” you say impatiently, gesturing at the Xianzhou scenery. There’s a frosty quality to the architecture, something about the way the shadows wreathe everything in a quiet blue like the promise of future snowfall.

“No,” Dan Heng says. His voice is solemn now, the way it usually is, low, contemplative, and serious. “But I’m not supposed to remember anything. Do you?”

You press your hand to your chest, where a plain, white-clothed pouch rests under your clothing. You feel the shape of it against your heart, the ashy contents shifting without a complaint. “Not at all. But that’s how it is for all short-lived species, right? How are we supposed to remember our past lives?”

“Do you want to remember?”

“Do you?” you return.

“No.”

“Then you understand. We only have the here and now,” you say. “Let’s go. The sooner we finish, the sooner we leave.”

In the distance, the Luofu curves out of the sunlight like a dream, distant and strange. Hopefully, once you complete your mission, you’ll get to wake up from this place for good.

The streets of Central Starskiff Haven hum with life, each footstep and stray voice another note in its song. You and Dan Heng move discreetly down the streets. Even with your heavy clothing and fake identification, bought in some seedy online backroom for a steep price, there’s still the persistent fear that you’ll be recognized.

But some part of you can’t stop drinking in the sights around you. Students stopping by for afterschool snacks at street stalls, clutching egg waffles and toasted buns. Cycranes zipping through the air, packages clutched in their feet. Books with ink so fresh it’s still wet glittering enticingly in the open, full of characters you can’t make out.

After a lifetime of living in a different world, it’s alien to see so many people with features like yours, to hear people speak with your mother’s tongue, a language you have the most rudimentary grasp of. In another life, this would have been your home, and you’ve never felt more alone.

Dan Heng taps your shoulder. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” you say, tearing your eyes from the scenery. “It’s just not what I expected. I feel like a tourist.”

“Is that a bad thing to be? Neither of us really grew up here.”

“I don’t know. I just thought… I would feel a connection. This is where my mother was from. A past version of me was once born here. But there’s nothing. This is just another world, same as all the others we’ve gone to.”

“That’s surprisingly sentimental coming from you,” Dan Heng says. “Do you need to feel a connection to this place?”

“Yes? No? Maybe.” Your hand drifts to the pouch under your clothing again. The nervous habit makes you feel like a child, chasing after the trail of your mother’s skirt. “I thought it would make sense if I felt something. It was always such a big deal to other people that my family was from here, even if I technically wasn’t. And now I’m here, and it’s… no big deal at all.”

“Your relationship to this place is yours, and yours alone. No one else gets to decide what you should feel.” Dan Heng raps his knuckles along your cheek, a gentle, chiding gesture.

“Sorry for rambling.” You shake your head. “I know you don’t have the best memories here.”

You can’t call it a smile, but there’s a softness to the planes of his face, like the swaying leaves of a tree protecting someone from harsh sunshine. Everyone thinks Dan Heng is stoic, but that’s only because they haven’t taken the time to observe the miniscule changes in his expression, like you have. 

He doesn’t comment on your staring, though it probably doesn’t go unnoticed. “It’s fine. Truth to be told, I’m having a hard time feeling anything, either. I always wanted to leave the Luofu, and once I did, I wanted to stay as far away as possible.”

“If it’s hard for you to be here, you can head back early,” you begin. “I’m not going to force you to come with me for my own selfish–”

“I wouldn’t have come if I didn’t want to be here with you.”

“Now who’s the sentimental one?” You nudge him with your shoulder. “If I didn’t know any better, I would say you’re fond of me.”

“A grave mistake on my part,” he says. 

“Too bad. We’re in this together.”

“I know.” The back of his hand brushes against yours, knuckles grazing over your skin. You’re familiar with the shape of it; you’ve sparred with him so many times to the point you could map out the constellation of calluses and bruises on his hand. 

It wasn’t in your plans to have a traveling companion when you first ran into him. But maybe it was fate, or a miracle, or some twisted joke that the two of you, of all people, ran into each other. 

It was several years ago that you happened to land on a dusty planet at the same time, and while waiting for your next transport, you whiled the hours away with comfortable conversation, and then a quick spar once you noticed his weapon.

Whatever tension you might have felt melted away once you realized Dan Hen didn’t grow up in the Xianzhou Alliance. He might have been born there, but he didn’t consider himself as someone who belonged there. He was like you, so you didn’t have to explain yourself nearly as much as you would with a stranger with a connection to the place.

When you did inevitably run into someone from Xianzhou, they would start excitedly talking to you in the native language, before you had to stop them and tell them you hadn’t been raised there and had the language skills equivalent to a child, so you didn’t understand half the things they just said.

It was either the language, or their inevitable comments on your sword form, how they wondered where you learned it from, because it was just so different from any styles found in the Alliance. Then you would have to explain you were taught in a distant galaxy, so it wasn’t real Xianzhou swordplay at all.

Still. It wasn’t your plan to have anyone in your life at all, even if you got along with Dan Heng, not with your mother’s warnings always in the back of your mind. Anyone dragged into your fate would only end up unhappy.

Which is why, as cruel as it was, a part of you was relieved Dan Heng’s fate was just as unhappy as yours once he shared it with you. It means you couldn’t drag him down because he was already crawling in the mud with you, which meant it was safe to be around him. It was true then, and it’s still true now.

His hand brushes against yours again. You could take it, if you wanted. It would be so easy, too. To just lace your fingers together, like any of the happy lovers you see around you.

But you pull your hand aside as casually as you can, and he doesn’t try again.

“We can reach the Divination Commission from there,” Dan Heng murmurs, tilting his chin in what looks, to you, like a random direction.

“How did you know that? I thought you said you never got to explore the Luofu when you were here.”

“I didn’t. I just happen to be able to read the signs,” he says dryly.

You pout. You’re also a little envious of him in that regard; your mother had never taught you the language, and all you could recognize are a few miscellaneous words and your own name. “Then lead the way.”

Despite Dan Heng’s teasing, you wouldn’t consider yourself a sentimental person. So maybe it’s the atmosphere of the Luofu, or the pouch of ashes resting so close to your heart, but when you look at the landscape, all you can think about is your mother.

Growing up, your mother couldn’t help but try to make stories out of everything. You always chalked it up as a symptom of her age. She had lived centuries, could have raised dozens of children with lives as brief as yours and watched them die, all while without aging a single day.

Or maybe her proclivity for stories was because she had once been a respected diviner. She tracked the future, mapped it out with equations and charts, and could never take her eyes off the stars.

“People think the future is untameable, that fate will always have its way,” she lectured, steel in her eyes. “But it’s not.”

She said that often, but there was always a desperation to her tone. As if she would fall apart if she couldn’t believe it. It was your fault she lived that way, you knew that, even if she tried to pretend otherwise. 

Your mother didn’t bother to hide the truth from you and told you about your fate and your past lives as matter-of-factly as if she was discussing the weather once you were old enough (which, on a space station, the weather was always unchanging).

This was not her first time calling you her child, even if it was, to you, the first time calling her mother. She had raised you so many times already, in all of your past lives, to try to change your fate. Hiding the truth. Running away. Begging for mercy. Anything to keep you alive. But it always ended the same way.

“Do you ever get tired of doing this?” You’d asked her, once, when you were still too young to know any subtlety.

There was a distant expression on her face, as if she was looking not at you, but all the versions of you she had ever raised, every past life superimposing on this one. She remembered it all while you remembered nothing, and there would always be that gulf between you, vast and deep and unnavigable.

“All long-life species get tired,” she said.

You had seen the photographs, too, disintegrating papers and old lightcones of children just like you, from centuries ago. Your mother kept them hidden, but not well enough to keep her memories out of the prying hands of a curious child. 

It was strange to look at yourself, existing in lives you could not remember. Though, there were never any pictures of you past your early adulthood. The oldest version of you only managed to reach a respectable thirty some years.

And the photographs were all old. You remembered that. There were no pictures of you from the past century or so. At some point, your mother had stopped keeping track of your lives. That was why the only reason you could recognize your own face was by looking in the mirror, touching the glass lightly as if you could unravel all your past lives and memories.

But you weren’t the only one who forgot things. You had pointed at some advanced astronomical equipment in your mother’s lab a long time ago, where she tracked planetary rotations and the movement of stars, and asked what she would have called it in Xianzhou. 

It was a simple game you played with her, one where her face would soften in a way it never did otherwise, and she would speak in a language as musical as river water pouring over stones. It’s a language she never bothered to teach you outside of the most basic words, so you delighted in hearing it from her. Pieces of your culture, that you always had to snuggle away in scraps.

“So you want to know what that’s called?” she said, a laugh already forming in her voice. “It’s…” Her face blanked, and the laughter died from her words. “It’s called...”

And your mother slowly turned her head to stare at the giant, black contraption, all smooth metal and clear glass plates, and watched it for a long moment.

“It’s been a long time,” she murmured. “So long.”

And she wasn’t speaking to you, not really. So you snuck out the door without her noticing. It was early signs of mara, perhaps, her age catching up to her. Or maybe it was the long exile from her home, causing her language to disintegrate because there was no one she could speak it with anymore.

She could have spoken it with you. You’re certain she taught it to some of your past lives. But in this life, all she wanted was to keep you away from Xianzhou, even if it was just from the culture.

No matter the reason, it was your fault. Your fault she couldn’t have an easy life, not even in her twilight years.

This is why this is all you can do for her as her child.

You and Dan Heng stand on a bridge, red guard rails stark against the pure blue sky, stretching into infinity.

You untie the pouch around your neck, soft cloth and warm leather, so much so like another heart. It has absorbed your body heat, because you haven’t taken it off for a second since you received it.

“Is this how Xianzhou funerals are supposed to go?” you say jokingly, slowly pulling the pouch open. Gray ash shifts inside, centuries of one life distilled into a simple pile. “My mother might be disappointed.”

“I don’t think so,” Dan Heng says. “But does it matter? It’s how you’re going to honor her.”

You could have read up on funerary rites and follow the customs written within, but it felt wrong. You have no personal attachment to those rites outside of a distant, clinical interest. Those aren’t really your customs, and neither did you want to repeat the rites from the space station where you grew up, because those weren’t your mother’s.

So this is the best compromise, something solely your own.

You fling the pouch so the ash arcs in a silver crescent as it falls, drifting away on the wind.

Again, and again, and again, until there’s nothing left of your mother, and every piece of her is finally back home.

“Hey! What are the two of you doing?” The voice is clear and loud, and even with your limited knowledge of Xianzhou language, you can make out exactly what it’s saying.

You and Dan Heng glance at each other as several Cloud Knights saunter up to you, weapons clutched tightly in their hands. There’s a child leading them, a frown on his face, but knowing how long the people live here, he’s probably older than you. Shit. 

Dan Heng pulls the hood lower over his face as you stand in front of him, trying to casually shield him from view. He’s the most recognizable figure of the two of you, and damn it all if you get him in trouble.

The boy leading the Cloud Knights, with his long, blonde ponytail swinging, starts talking rapid-fire in your mother’s tongue so fast you can only make out a few of the words. When you only stare at him, he glances at the Cloud Knight next to him uncertainly.

“They’re foreigners,” the Cloud Knight says bluntly. “Not natives of Xianzhou.” He says this in a language common across space that you can understand. For your benefit, perhaps, but it still makes your cheeks flare with embarrassed warmth.

“Oh. I thought… they looked like…” The boy shakes his head. “Never mind. Foreigner or native, no one is allowed to litter here! What did you even throw?”

“Ashes,” you say. You can feel the stare of everyone on you, even Dan Heng’s. “It was a funerary rite for a family member who lived here a long time ago.”

“Be that as it may, you didn’t get authorization to–” one of the Cloud Knights begins, but the boy holds up a hand. He’s observing you, a little furrow to his eyebrows as he tilts his head.

He must come to some sort of conclusion, because he nods his head, and then gestures for the Cloud Knights to stand back with a flick of his wrist. “I know who these people are. I’ll take care of this.”

Your stomach drops at his confident tone. You’ve never seen this child before, but if he blows your cover, then you have no qualms about drawing your weapon on him.

“You may know who we are, but we don’t know you. Are you sure you aren’t mistaken?” Dan Heng says quietly. He’s shoulder to shoulder with you now, and the familiar tension of his shoulders lets you know that he’s ready to draw his weapon at any time.

“I’m Yanqing, and, to be fair, I only really know that one.” He points at you. “The general told me to be on the lookout if any guests looking like them came to the Luofu. He wants to talk with them personally.”

“The general?” you say faintly. Dan Heng places a steadying hand on the small of your back. You can’t look at anyone but Yanqing right now. “Who’s the general?”

“You don’t know? I’m talking about General Jing Yuan,” Yanqing says proudly.

Jing Yuan. You aren’t sure if you should scream, or cry, or laugh, so all you do is stand there blankly. You’ve heard that name so many times in your nightmares, in your mother’s pained voice as she clutched your shoulders like claws, that it sounds just like an old fairytale monster now.

“Don’t ever get near that man,” she said. “If you see him, you have to run. Survive, no matter what, do you understand?”

But no matter how you struggle, no matter what your mother did, there’s only one ending for you. Haven’t your past selves tried endlessly to escape? Haven’t you seen their failures etched into your mother’s face?

Because this man, Jing Yuan, will kill you. Like he has in every life before, and he will in every life after.

“Are you ready?” Yanqing says cheerfully.

You muster up a faint smile. The only thing keeping you from falling is Dan Heng’s touch, anchoring you with a solid reassurance. “I think so. Why don’t you show us the way?”

It won’t be a lie to say that you’ve spent almost all of your life waiting to see Jing Yuan in person. Each step you take towards the Seat of Divine Foresight feels like it lasts both an eternity and a moment.

“We could try to run,” Dan Heng says quietly. “If you don’t want to do this.”

You let out a short laugh. “There’s no point in running.”

Because unlike your mother, who lied to herself everyday, you refuse to cling to false hopes. Every road would lead to this, so even if you end up running, you would eventually make your way back here eventually.

You can barely focus on your surroundings when Yanqing ushers you into the building. All you can think about is him, that man. Where is he? Will he draw his weapon immediately? What sort of person is he, to make your mother curse him so?

Then you see him.

He’s standing by his desk, and his eyes are like a shot of golden sunlight, piercing through you, illuminating everything you are. It feels like he belongs here, waiting for you. Like he’s been waiting for you for a thousand years, and could wait a thousand more.

Jing Yuan. You don’t recognize him at all. 

“General, I’ve brought the guest you said might show up,” Yanqing announces.

“Thank you, Yanqing,” Jing Yuan says. He keeps his gaze focused on Yanqing, but despite that, you can still feel the full weight of his attention.

Yanqing glances at you, and then back at the general. It’s obvious he feels some sort of tension in the air, but can’t place what it is. “If that’s all you need, then…”

“It is,” Jing Yuan says. It’s only when the patter of Yanqing’s reluctant footsteps fade that he finally acknowledges you. “Hello. This is the first time you’re meeting me, isn’t it?”

“It’s not your first time, though,” you return.

“No,” he agrees, “it’s not. How is your mother?”

“Dead. Your knights caught me dumping her ashes over the bridge.”

“I see.” He closes his eyes briefly. “Another old friend, gone. Was it the mara?”

“Yes,” you say. “I was the one who had to kill her.”

“That’s unfortunate. But she loved you very much; I’m sure she would have preferred it was you over anyone else.”

“She’s dead all the same.”

“How was she?”

“She was…” You bring a hand to your chest, but the pouch is no longer there. “She was tired.”

“It’s been a long few centuries. And your companion…” Jing Yuan turns his gaze to Dan Heng, who ducks his head awkwardly. Surprise flickers across his face; it’s the first emotion you’ve seen him express. “Ah. How surprising. I wonder if it’s fate that brings the two of you together.”

“Are you going to turn us in?” Dan Heng says. His voice is steady, but his hands are balled up into fists, his knuckles turning white. You place a gentle hand over one of his, and you feel him relax, just a bit.

Jing Yuan watches both of your hands with a distant sadness. “No. I don’t think it would do any good. Though it was rather risky for both of you to sneak here together.”

“There was no other way,” Dan Heng says.

“Maybe so.” Jing Yuan turns to his desk, running his hands over the stacks of papers. “Would you like some tea? I’ve been an inhospitable host, asking you questions without offering any refreshments.”

“No need. We’ll be leaving soon enough,” you say. You still feel nothing looking at this man. He’s beautiful, in the same way a broken piece of stained glass is beautiful, fragile and sharp and something you can never touch without hurting yourself. You understand how, in another life, you fell in love with him.

But in this life, he’s just a stranger.

“I understand,” Jing Yuan says. 

“Are you going to get it over with?” you say bluntly. Dan Heng shoots you a warning look, but you take a step forward. Closer to Jing Yuan. Closer to your fate.

“Do you want it to be over so soon?” he says quietly.

“No. But you can’t fight fate, and you’ll be the one to end my life, eventually.”

“That doesn’t mean I want to cut you down so soon and so callously.”

“I don’t think either of us have a choice in the matter.”

“No,” he says, “we don’t.”

“And do you think it’s fair?” you say, the words tumbling from you before you even know what you’re saying. It’s all impersonal knowledge to you, your past lives, only made real by the heat of your resentment and nightmares. “That I have to be punished for something another version of me did, so long ago? I might have broken the rules by attempting to seek immortality, but that wasn’t me. It was a past life, which has nothing to do with who I am now.”

“The Ten-Lords Commission thought it was fair. For you to suffer the full consequences of your actions. A long life species would be punished for centuries. And this is how you could serve that same sentence.”

“But what about you?” you demand. “Do you care that I have to die by your hand when you’re nothing but a stranger to me?”

“What answer do you want?” he says mildly. “From me, as a general, or from me, as your former lover?”

There’s silence again. Jing Yuan is staring at you with that distant sadness again, but you don’t know if it’s you he’s looking at, or the countless versions of you that he’s known. It’s the same look your mother had when she looked at you. Though she tried to love you as best as she could, sometimes it felt like she was just going through the motions of a routine she had settled into.

Did Jing Yuan have the same look on his face when he killed you in all your previous lives? His hands are so clean. You can’t imagine your blood staining them.

Again, and again, and again. You, and Jing Yuan, and your mother, repeating this play without end.

“What if I killed you?” you ask.

“Do you want to?”

“Would it end this?”

“I’m not sure,” he says.

You look down at your shoes. “Why is it you? Were you chosen just to hurt me?” Or was it chosen to hurt him?

“No. It was…” He sighed. “There was no reason for it other than pragmatism. I’m sorry if that disappoints you. Your betrayal came shortly after Dan Feng’s actions, and I was assigned the task simply because I was close to both of you. So it was a way to ensure the trust of the rest of the Alliance, to prove I was fit for being Arbiter-General.”

You slowly wrap your arms around yourself. “Oh.”

Jing Yuan speaks again, and doesn’t look away from you. You would have hated him a little more if he did. “I’ve tried a lot of things over the centuries to try to spare you. Could I grant you a few more decades? But even if it’s indirectly, you would always die by my hand. If not by my guandao, then as collateral damage to my orders, or to my knights. Our fates are too entwined for a different path.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” 

“It’s something I think you should know.”

“So you’re not going to try to find another way this time? You’ve given up?”

“It would not be right to close my eyes and let something else kill you,” he says. You might have been touched by his sense of honor if not for the fact it’s your death he speaks of like it’s unstoppable.

“Do you regret it, then?” you say.

It takes a long while for him to respond. When he does, all he says is, softly, “Regret? I’m unsure. All I know is that it has been a long, long time, and that I’m tired.”

It’s the same thing your mother might have said. “That’s all I have to say to you, then. If you hunt me down in this life, I hope you know I’ll fight back,” you say. “Because I am going to survive. No matter what.”

“I would expect no less. Good-bye for now, then.” Jing Yuan tilts his head at Dan Heng. “Good-bye to you as well, old friend. Do you not have any questions for me?”

“I do not, because I’m not the person you knew,” Dan Heng says curtly. “I’m only here to support them.”

“Of course,” Jing Yuan says. “I understand.”

For a brief moment, you wonder if you should spit out the words murderer, like you thought for so many sleepless nights when you thought about him. Curse his name. Take your sword out and run him through, here and now, before he can hurt you.

You catch his eye, and Jing Yuan smiles at you, like he knows your thoughts and welcomes you to do what you must. Would he still smile even if your blade is stained with his blood? Some part of you tells you that he will, just like your mother did. 

You turn your head away, and the moment passes. 

There’s still a few more hours left before your scheduled ride out of the Luofu, but neither you nor Dan Heng are in the mood to talk. You wander the streets aimlessly until it’s time to board, and retire to your own separate cabins. 

Jing Yuan. You don’t know what to think. Your meeting is more anticlimactic than you could expect. There are no tears, no rage, nothing. Nothing but a distant, cool politeness. He is a stranger, after all. And he’s met you countless times; perhaps he’s even had the exact same conversation with another version of yourself. 

What else could you say? The next time you see him, it would be at the end of his guandao.

It’s when the Xianzhou Alliance is only a speck behind you that you knock on the door to Dan Heng’s cabin, and enter when he says, “It’s open.”

“Are you okay?” you say immediately. He’s sitting cross-legged on the floor, leaning against his bed.

“I’m okay. Are you?”

You look at Dan Heng, and you burst into tears. All you can do is shake and hiccup as he hastily stands and gathers you into his arms, stroking your back with a hesitant, awkward hand. He doesn’t say anything, and you’re glad. Because you don’t know what it is you’re feeling, what it is that you want, what it is that’s happening.

You can understand why, in another life, some version of you had loved Jing Yuan so much you had willingly risked everything to be with him. Why your mother, who had adopted a short-lived species, went into exile with you, and divined your location in every life to find you, raise you, and try to save you. You can even understand why Jing Yuan might choose to be the one to end your life himself out of some sense of lingering love and honor.

But this is a tragedy, hundreds of years old, made for the entertainment of no one and the pain of everyone involved. How much longer? How much longer do you have to live on the run? How much longer do you have to be punished for the unpardonable sin of some past life? You’ve lost your home, your culture, your mother. In the next life, there will be no one to raise you and to teach you about your fate, so you’ll face Jing Yuan’s guandao in ignorant terror.

Again, and again, and again. The same pain, the same agony, the same death.

You don’t know if Jing Yuan or your mother loves you– loved you– or if they’re just chasing ghosts. 

You couldn’t do anything to repay your mother, except to kill her and scatter her ashes in a home she never got to see, for hundreds of years, because of you. What life is that?

And you’re taking advantage of Dan Heng’s affections, too, because you’re afraid, because you’re weak, because you’re going to die.

The gentle way he holds you and comforts you wordlessly makes you cry all the more as you bury your face into his shirt, soaking the fabric. 

“Dan Heng.”

“Yes?”